For most of my life, when I approached anything I wanted to have or achieve, my self-talk prepared me for how I'd feel if I didn't get it. I talked myself out of winning, sometimes out of even trying, because I wanted to prepare myself for the sting of failure and disappointment. It was a self-defeating mind-game that made winning seem like a perk and losing, not so bad.

I slumped in front of the counselor with a full-on ugly cry, confused and struggling. A few short months after my ex-husband and I had separated, my counselor asked me how I saw myself. I didn't know how to answer her.

il dolce far niente

the sweetness of doing nothing

I’ll admit, when I was first introduced to this classic Italian phrase, I was wrapped up on my couch in my pajamas in the middle of a Saturday afternoon eating ice cream. Last summer was the first time I had ever seen Eat. Pray. Love. — and that was me.

I’ve been going through a hard thing.

Mounting stress, anxiety, and drama have come at me wave after wave—and not in a rhythm I could easily ride out, but one that left me fighting. Difficult circumstances anchored themselves in my life so long, they were beginning to pull me under. Just when I would come up for air, I’d get pounded by another wave I didn’t see coming.

While I may have a few mixed feelings about the big 4-0, mostly I'm totally excited about it. Really, it's giving me the biggest laugh! At first, I thought this may be because I am in some sort of denial. I mean, 40 is old, right? So, I did some research on "the Google," and apparently 40 is the new 20. I'm completely dismissing the fact that these articles were likely written by 40-year-olds, like me. And I'm embracing the theory that if I read it online, it must be true.

I miss my mommy today.

It's been 45 days since Mom died, and I still can't believe she's really gone. In some ways, she is definitely still here. I see her in my daughter all the time. Sometimes her resemblances crack me up, and other times they take my breath away.

I play this game in my head.

I tell myself how hard I’ll work this week, and then I’ll take a few hours off on Saturday evening to just relax. Or I tell myself, if I’ll just commit to this crazy schedule over the summer, I’ll settle into a better routine when the kids go back to school. Or, I don’t mind working my tail off for the next four months, because I’m going to take four whole days off for a brief little trip to Mexico to unwind.

Fasten your seatbelts all my Type-A’s...

Turns out, there’s nothing wrong with a little off-roading.

I know from personal experience that if your comfort zone is between the white lines, you would never even dream of off-roading.

You use your blinker and obey the posted speed. You map out your course before you leave the house, and always get there on time. You keep your hands at 10 and 2.  Anything less would be imperfect and unacceptable to a Type A.  We pride ourselves in keeping it between the lines.

As perfectionists, we tend a little toward isolation. We have friends. But, we’ve learned that in order to keep up with our impossible standards of being perfect, we must keep them at a safe distance, or they will see all our imperfections.

Seriously. Who are we kidding?

But that is exactly what I spent the first 30-something years of my life doing…

Life is like a baby.
It doesn’t come with instructions.
Everyone has an opinion about how you are irreversibly screwing it up.
But at the end of the day, what you decide to do with it is entirely up to you.

Walls...

Doors keep people in or they keep them out.

But walls…walls protect us from the elements.

Walls protect us from heat and cold, from wind and rain…from storms. Walls take a long time to build. There must be planning and design, gathering of materials, and weeks or months of construction. But they can be brought down in minutes—whether by natural disaster, implosion, or a big ‘ol wrecking ball. It doesn’t take much to level a wall.

Homes.

Every home has a front door.
It’s the main point of entry.
It’s a means of protection.
It regulates access.

Unlike walls which are immovable, front doors offer us a choice. We can fling it wide open to our closest friends and family. We can crack it open with the chain to someone we are unsure of. Or we can leave it shut and locked up tight from a stranger or someone we don’t trust.

Too much energy to blossom...  Each week as I feed and water them and inspect them gingerly for blooms, I hear those words in my head.  I know that I learned a lot more from The Home Depot lady than how to care for honeysuckle.  I learned how to grow during the extreme seasons of life.

Life is traveled on an open road. There is a beginning. An end. And a messy middle.

You can drive like a bat out of hell and fly through life at excessive speeds. Or you can poke along like a 90 year old granny with her nose to the wheel and foot on the brake. Either way, you are likely to pose a threat to yourself and others somewhere along the way.

I am a city-girl, which probably makes me the least qualified person to talk about bulldozers. But I am going to anyway because the image just won’t leave me. I was sipping a nonfat latte in the new downtown Starbucks last week, in my city-girl dress and matching boots (see, completely unqualified). I was catching up with a friend, and without a thought in my head I told him, “I feel like a bulldozer.”

We are taught that compassion means paying attention to the people around us, reaching out to someone less fortunate or less able. Showing compassion means seeing someone else’s need and doing something yourself to meet it.

“If you surrender completely to the moments as they pass, you live more richly those moments.”

~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh

As a kid I always chose "truth" in the game of "Truth or Dare" because I was too chicken to take most dares and too square to have any juicy "truth" to share anyway.

But today I am making an exception.  I am accepting a "dare." I am taking Jeff Goins' challenge to s.l..o...w.......d..o....w.....n.

It' a 5-Day "dare" he calls the Slow Down Challenge.

Utterly exhausted at the end of May, I decided to conduct a secret little experiment in the month of June to simplify. You can read more about it by clicking the link to this guest post.

The thought behind it was to begin slowing my life down by letting this one little word “simplify” roll around in my heart and mind all month.

Life is good. Even when it’s hard, life is good.

For me, this always comes in the form of gratitude.